A Sad Beginning
by Thorin the Dwarf
Summary: By the time you reach the end, it should be obvious to all you White Collar fans who the main character is. One-shot. Please Comment, constructive crit only.


The moment he reached the front door, he knew something was out of place. He had an aching feeling tugging at his heart, and a cold stone seemed to weigh down his stomach. He tested the door, as he always did, to see if it was unlocked. His mother usually kept it locked when she was home alone. Strangely, the door was unlocked, and the handle turned easily, without a sound. His feeling worsened.

As the door swung open on slightly loose hinges, a site that no 6 year old boy should have to suffer through met the youth's eyes. Shock set in, and he stood slack-jawed in the doorway. When his senses finally came to him, he rushed to his mother's dead body on the floor, weeping until the neighbor, who had been outside gardening at the time, came up and saw the door open.

She didn't have to cross the threshold to see the two of them, son and mother; one crouched over the other's dead form. She ran back to her house to call the police. Five minutes later and the cops were in the house, trying to peel the boy off his mother. His father was a police officer, according to his mother. He left them both when he was just 2 years old. He didn't remember what his dad even looked like.

The hatred of police and officials set in then, as the cops dragged the poor boy away from his mother and to a police car. They had him questioned, forced him to talk about his mother in ways that he felt violated his personal life, and his rights. He swore he could never again trust the law.

After that, he was sent to a foster home, where he had no friends, no family, and no life to look forward to. He tried to run away twice, but they always found him and brought him back. The third time, he had barely gotten out the door when something hard impacted the back of his head and he fell, unconscious, to the ground.

He woke up later, though how much later he couldn't tell, in a dark room, with his hands cuffed behind his back and his feet tied to the chair he was sitting on. He started to struggle immediately, trying to loosen the bonds that held him to the chair. The rope tore and burned the skin around his ankles.

Suddenly there was a light, as the door behind him opened. A man walked in and smiled coldly at him. "You've grown a lot in four years," he commented, sitting down in a chair in front of the frightened boy.

"I've never seen you before in my life!" the boy protested. Being only six years of age, he couldn't count yet, and realize that this was his father speaking to him.

The man, his father, laughed mirthlessly. "Of course you have. I'm your father," he said, taking pleasure at the fear and confusion in his son's eyes. "Your mother took away everything I had. So now I'm going to take everything from her. I took her life, and I took you." The grin he now bore was the most terrifying thing the boy had seen, and he tried to yell for help. His father placed a hand over his son's mouth.

"Now, don't do that. No can hear you. And if they could, they couldn't do anything. I'm still a cop, so I have control over the authorities." He laughed again and left the boy in the room, tears streaming down his face.

The next day, or so the boy guessed, came and went slowly and painfully. His ankles were now bleeding from the rope burns he had received from constant struggling. After hours of working at it, however, he finally managed to free himself from the bonds and scooted his way across the room to where a desk was. He was barely able to reach his hands up to grab a paperclip off the top, leaning forward to stretch his cuffed hands upward.

It took another five minutes or so for him to unbend the paperclip, as he was attempting to do so with one hand. After fiddling with the lock for a minute or so, it popped open. A natural lock-pick. He had learned from trying to escape the foster care center that in order to make it as far as the front door, you needed to be silent and quick. He opened the door cautiously, checking to make sure his dad wasn't anywhere in site. He then found his way to the front door and bolted as soon as he was outside.

He stopped the first car he saw and asked for a ride. It was a woman with a child of her own, around the same age as himself. They didn't have much time to talk before he was back at the foster care center, but he learned the boy's name and his favorite color. The family made frequent visits to the foster care center after that, and he had more time to spend with his only friend, and the only person he felt he could trust.

Later in his life, after never being adopted, he ran into his old friend again, and they shared similar interests after all the years. They teamed up together, were caught together, and even lived together at one point. Though he never showed it, he never got over that part of his young life. He and his friend were the only ones alive that knew about it, and he intended to keep it that way.


End file.
